Thursday, October 31, 2013

At $680 billion,
the fiscal 2013 deficit is 51 percent less than it was in 2009, when it
hit a record high nominally of $1.4 trillion.

As
a percent of the economy, it's also considerably smaller than it's been
in the past five years, coming in at 4.1 percent of gross domestic
product. By contrast, the annual deficit in 2009 topped 10 percent of
GDP. And last year it was 6.8 percent.

Unemployment is set to rise again in the US if the pace of jobs growth continues to erode, a top economist warned Wednesday.
Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics and a former adviser to presidential candidate John McCain, made his comments as ADP, the giant payroll provider, said the private sector added 130,000 jobs from September to October. ADP revised September’s job gain down from 166,000 to 145,000. Moody’s helps compile the closely-watched poll.
"The government shutdown and debt limit brinksmanship hurt the already softening job market in October. Average monthly growth has fallen below 150,000. Any further weakening would signal rising unemployment,” said Zandi.

And Mark Zandi should know, the people who organized the shutdown and the debt limit idiocy were the people who used to pay him.

But thanks the the sequester, for one example, it's all part of the bipartisan clusterfuck that will have everybody pointing fingers for the indefinite future while the bulk of the country struggles mightily.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

As some readers may remember, I've been walking and walking (90 to 100 miles a week) the last eight months or so now and accompanying the walk have always been podcasts...mostly on four topics: comedy, history, sports, and science.

We're going to have to cut your hours indefinitely, but hey, today you can dress up in a silly costume.

And we are getting rid of our health insurance plans for non-essential employees, and guess what you are? But hey, today and maybe even tomorrow, feel fee to dress up as the Hulk, as long as you don't smash.

And your annual bonus, will not be paid, for the seventh annual year. But you do a great Snow White.

In addition, remember that cutting your hours thing we talked about above? Yeeeeeaaah, we are simply changing those to "volunteer time" where we passively-aggressively ask you to stay late and come in on the weekends...if you'd like to keep working here. But hey, you'll occasionally get a T-shirt, and the rest of this week, until casual Friday, you can dress up as Walter White (but not Miley Cyrus).

An inspiring tale of courage from our Congress...but then again, they are no different than our media or the rest of the nation. As those who read here and a few other select places the victims of drone attacks in Pakistan appeared before a Congressional Committee yesterday. This included this testimony:

The family of a 67-year-old midwife from a remote village in North Waziristan told lawmakers on Tuesday about her death and the "CIA drone" they say was responsible. Their harrowing accounts marked the first time Congress had ever heard from civilian victims of an alleged US drone strike.

'
She was apparently one of the 900 or so civilians killed in drone attacks.
So we are consistently killing civilians by the hundreds using drones. You'd think this would be a big story. You'd be wrong, at least in the country responsible for the killing.

The hearing was attended by only five members of Congress, and Grayson said such low numbers of lawmakers at hearings were not unusual. Those attending were all Democrats: Rush Holt of New Jersey, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, John Conyers of Michigan, Rick Nolan of Minnesota, and Grayson, the Florida Democrat responsible for inviting the family to Washington and for holding the hearing.

One need never worry about "merit" in the right-wing (nepotism, need not be mentioned thank you very much), for having the temerity to be a mean-spirited idiot apparently comes with the security of perpetual employment somewhere.

Jason Richwine, who parted ways with the Heritage Foundation over his research arguing Hispanics are intellectually inferior to whites, has quietly begun writing semi-regularly for the flagship conservative publication National Review.

"Let's give a gig to the guy too bigoted for the Heritage Foundation!" I believe he inherited the John Derbyshire endowned Chair.

Monday, October 28, 2013

A new study says that each year approximately 7,500 children are
admitted to U.S. hospitals with gunshot wounds and more than 500
children die during hospital admission from these injuries.

An abstract of the study, titled "United States Gunshot
Violence--Disturbing Trends," was presented on Sunday by researchers at
the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and
Exhibition in Orlando, Fla. The study also found that states with higher
numbers of firearm ownership had higher proportions of childhood
gunshot wounds.

"Handguns account for the majority of childhood
gunshot wounds and this number appears to be increasing over the last
decade," Arin Madenci, MD, MPH, the author's lead study, said in a statement issued by the AAP.
"Furthermore, states with higher percentages of household firearm
ownership also tended to have higher proportions of childhood gunshot
wounds, especially those occurring in the home."

Three disclosures this week show that the United States is losing its
way in the struggle against terrorism. Sweeping government efforts to
stop attacks are backfiring abroad and infringing on basic rights at
home.

CIA drone strikes are killing scores of civilians in Pakistan and
Yemen. The National Security Agency is eavesdropping on tens of
millions of phone calls worldwide — including those of 35 foreign
leaders — in the name of U.S. security.

And the Department of Homeland Security is using algorithms to
“prescreen” travelers before they board domestic flights, reviewing
government and private databases that include Americans’ tax
identification numbers, car registrations and property records.

Obama administration officials have a duty to protect Americans from
terrorism. But out-of-control NSA surveillance, an ever-expanding
culture of secrecy and still-classified rules for how and when
foreigners and even Americans can be killed by drone strikes are
excessive, unnecessary and destructive.

Twelve years after September 11, 2001, the United States’ obsession
with al Qaeda is doing more damage to the nation than the terrorist
group itself.

While we behold the wonders of just who we as a country have not been spying on since 2001 (I'm guessing pretty much the ones we probably should actually being spying on) let us consider the wonders of this.

Recently there have been reasons to believe that there has been progress in our dealings with Iran and it's nuclear program.

Iran's apparent new readiness to address international concerns about its atomic ambitions will be tested in talks with U.N. inspectors on Monday, with diplomats hoping for progress such as on access to a sensitive military site.

On ABC's 'This Week', host George Stephanopoulous asked Cheney about the effectiveness of diplomatic talks in Iran.
"Is military action against Iran inevitable?" he said.

"I have trouble seeing how we're going to achieve our objective short of that," Cheney said.

Always nice to see the undead's perspective on things, of course, militarism has it's business models, and a bankroll.

Republican Party mega-donor and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson caused quite a storm this week after it was reported that he suggested that the United States use nuclear weapons to get the Iranians to end their nuclear program.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Cheney also criticized Obama for not taking better advantage of the intelligence he had on bin Laden.
"With bin Laden, [the White House was in] such a hurry to go out and announce victory, that I’m convinced that they probably did not get maximum damage out of the intel that they had captured," Cheney said.

Yes, this comes from the guy in the Administration who reacted so expertly to this...

The morning after a Connecticut judge granted convicted murderer and Kennedy relative Michael Skakel a retrial, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Skakel’s cousin, appeared on The Today Show in an interview with Matt Lauer, where the 59 year-old radio host defended Skakel’s innocence, or tried to.

So who killed Moxley? Kennedy revisits the 2003 claim
that two friends of Gitano “Tony” Bryant (the cousin of Kobe), whom
Tony had brought to Greenwich from the Bronx on the night of Moxley’s
death, beat her “caveman style” with a pair of golf clubs. That theory ultimately failed to exculpate Skakel.

Admirably,
Lauer repeatedly presses Kennedy to explain his arguments for his
relative’s innocence (one of which appears to be that a key witness,
Gregory Coleman, was a heroin addict) and tries to reign him in before
he goes too far off the deep end.

Robert Kennedy Jr. has had a lot of tragedy in his life and done a lot of good too. But I'm still not ready to forgive him for scaring parents from getting their kids vaccinated...obviously.

Responding to a question from a mother who asked why her hearing impaired
son hasn’t been healed despite her prayers, [Pat Robertson] said that
her son may be hindered by a “spirit of deafness.”

“I have dealt with people who are deaf and you rebuke the spirit of
deafness and they get healed,” Robertson said. “I don’t know what you’re
doing wrong.”

“Why don’t you try that and if it doesn’t work, try something else,” he said.

Pat Robertson says you must be doing something wrong if you can’t “heal” your son of deafness. After all, Robertson himself has healed deafness before, he said on the 700 Club
today. Responding to a question from a mother who asked why her hearing
impaired son hasn’t been healed despite her prayers, Robertson said
that her son may be hindered by a “spirit of deafness.”
“I have dealt with people who are deaf and you rebuke the spirit of
deafness and they get healed,” Robertson said. “I don’t know what you’re
doing wrong.”
“Why don’t you try that and if it doesn’t work, try something else,” he said.
- See more at:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-mother-who-cant-heal-sons-deafness-must-be-doing-something-wrong#sthash.IDLFWUnj.UuldLc9d.dpuf

Pat Robertson says you must be doing something wrong if you can’t “heal” your son of deafness. After all, Robertson himself has healed deafness before, he said on the 700 Club
today. Responding to a question from a mother who asked why her hearing
impaired son hasn’t been healed despite her prayers, Robertson said
that her son may be hindered by a “spirit of deafness.”
“I have dealt with people who are deaf and you rebuke the spirit of
deafness and they get healed,” Robertson said. “I don’t know what you’re
doing wrong.”
“Why don’t you try that and if it doesn’t work, try something else,” he said.
- See more at:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-mother-who-cant-heal-sons-deafness-must-be-doing-something-wrong#sthash.IDLFWUnj.UuldLc9d.dpuf

Pat Robertson says you must be doing something wrong if you can’t “heal” your son of deafness. After all, Robertson himself has healed deafness before, he said on the 700 Club
today. Responding to a question from a mother who asked why her hearing
impaired son hasn’t been healed despite her prayers, Robertson said
that her son may be hindered by a “spirit of deafness.”
“I have dealt with people who are deaf and you rebuke the spirit of
deafness and they get healed,” Robertson said. “I don’t know what you’re
doing wrong.”
“Why don’t you try that and if it doesn’t work, try something else,” he said.
- See more at:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-mother-who-cant-heal-sons-deafness-must-be-doing-something-wrong#sthash.IDLFWUnj.UuldLc9d.dpuf

Pat Robertson says you must be doing something wrong if you can’t “heal” your son of deafness. After all, Robertson himself has healed deafness before, he said on the 700 Club
today. Responding to a question from a mother who asked why her hearing
impaired son hasn’t been healed despite her prayers, Robertson said
that her son may be hindered by a “spirit of deafness.”
“I have dealt with people who are deaf and you rebuke the spirit of
deafness and they get healed,” Robertson said. “I don’t know what you’re
doing wrong.”
“Why don’t you try that and if it doesn’t work, try something else,” he said.
- See more at:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-mother-who-cant-heal-sons-deafness-must-be-doing-something-wrong#sthash.IDLFWUnj.UuldLc9d.dpuf

In Virginia prior to the shutdown things were not going well for ultra-conservative oral sex hater Ken Cuccenelli, but when your ideological kinsfolk put a half-million Virginia Federal Employees out of work that coffin in nailed shut.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe has jumped to a 17-point lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia gubernatorial race following the federal government shutdown that hit Northern Virginia hard and Hillary Clinton’s weekend visit to the state.

For anybody to be nearly 20 points behind Terry McAuliffe is a tremendous feat, but Ken Cuccenelli is the kind of politician that plans on losing for as much as possible, no matter how uninspiring the alternative.
Behold the secret plan.

Rick Santorum is signing up volunteers for a “strikeforce” to help Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in his bid to become governor of Virginia.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

In a sign of the political hangover congressional Republicans are suffering in the wake of the government shutdown, three-quarters of Americans in a new national poll say that most GOP members of Congress don't deserve to be re-elected.

"The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense." Elsewhere, he writes: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business."

Oh the inanity managing not to eclipse the sheer cruelty.
Turns out, that ACTUALLY was the policy.

A book written by New York Times reporter Peter Baker reveals the take of a senior official from former President George W. Bush's administration, who is quoted as saying that America went into Iraq to 'find somebody's ass to kick'.

Well, that's comforting...knowing your most bitter cynical assumption about the Bush Administration turned out to be right. The rest, not so much.

Monday, October 21, 2013

For example, on March 28, 2001, Vice President Cheney wrote
a “pending” letter of resignation because he suspected he might at any
moment become incapacitated by health problems. This was surely a surprise
for those affiliated with the Bush campaign who had vetted Cheney’s
health before asking him to run. But Cheney's cardiologist was a big fat liar and told the Bush campaign cardiologist that Cheney “was in good health with normal cardiac function.”

When Gupta asked Cheney to explain
the doctor's false claims, Cheney responded, “I’m not responsible for
that.” Gupta answered, “But sir, you saw it.” And then Cheney, refusing
to address the lie, dug in: “Listen to me, I think the bottom line is:
was I up to the task of being vice president? And there's no question. I
think based upon the fact that I did it for eight years that they were
right.”

What the author forgot to note is..."Who was in charge of vetting VP Candidates for the Bush Campaign?"

Oh, yeah.

Richard Cheney. How was Richard Cheney expected to know that Dick Cheney had a serious heart problem?

Saturday, October 19, 2013

I'm starting to wonder if Boy Blunder at least may have actually managed to keep shit from getting even worse.

Though this sounds like a joke, former Vice President Don Cheney and his
doctors were legitimately scared about him getting assassinated via
terrorists hacking into his defibrillator and causing a heart attack. So
they turned off the wireless feature so nobody would kill him via heart
hack.

Remember this is the same genius who during the First Gulf War tried to send military strategy tips to to his generals by sending tapes of Ken Burns' The Civil War.

A Fox News guest said that a Missouri teen who says she was raped by a
classmate was asking for it by going out late at night. He also accused
her of lying.

“What did she expect to happen at one in the morning after sneaking
out?” attorney Joseph DiBenedetto said on Shephard Smith Reports. “I’m
not saying — assuming that these facts are accurate and this did happen —
I’m not saying she deserved to be raped, but knowing the facts as we do
here including what the prosecutor has set forth, this case is going
nowhere and it's going nowhere quick.”

Shep Smith immediately jumped in and refuted his claims.

“What you’ve done, Joseph, is taken an alleged victim of rape and
turned her into a liar and a crime committer,” he said. “That’s a far
jump from a 1,000 miles away."

And at FoxNews you have a feeling it is Shephard Smith that will be getting the write-up.

Here's something for you to keep your policy abuse chubby for at least another four hours:

A majority of students in public schools throughout the American South and West are low-income for the first time in at least four
decades, according to a new study that details a demographic shift with broad implications for the country.

The analysis by the Southern Education Foundation,
the nation’s oldest education philanthropy, is based on the number of students from preschool through 12th grade who were eligible for the
federal free and reduced-price meals program in the 2010-11 school year.

"Schools, who needs 'em, there's poor kids there unable to pull themselves up by their Goodwill-Shoe purchased bootstraps."

Thursday, October 17, 2013

As he hasn't had the opportunity to go on "Meet the Press" and demand somebody be bombed the last couple weeks (how long until David Gregory wipes his chin and gets on that?) John McCain actually had time to be pithy, and I admit it worked.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) shrugged off Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) insinuation that he was an “al Qaeda supporter” in an interview with NBC Nightly News host Brian Williams on Wednesday, while conceding to an increasing amount of polarization between lawmakers.

“On that particular issue, sometimes comments like that are made out of malice,” McCain told Williams. “But if someone has no intelligence, I don’t view it as being a malicious statement. You can’t respond to that kind of thing.”

As CNN’s Dana Bash pointed out to Cruz, he had nothing to show for his efforts — President Barack Obama’s health care reform law had not been defunded nor delayed — after 16 days of a government shutdown.
Cruz, however, said that he disagreed: “Months ago, when the effort to defund Obamacare began, official Washington scoffed, they scoffed that the American people would rise up, they scoffed that the House of Representatives would do anything and they scoffed that the Senate would do anything.”

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Referring to his plan to preemptively send the Senate a House-passed
bill, Speaker John Boehner told his conference this morning that he’d
“rather throw a grenade than catch a grenade.” But with his right-wing
troops abandoning him again, it was the speaker who was left holding the
bomb.

After a day of furious negotiating with fellow Republicans
over how to tweak a bill he had unveiled in the morning, it was left to
stunned members of his leadership team to confirm to reporters that the
vote had been canceled...The canceled vote was no Twilight Zone episode, however, but
something far too familiar. Republicans eagerly compared it to the
fiscal cliff’s famous “Plan B” episode, when Boehner brought lawmakers
into a closed-door meeting in the Capitol basement, said the serenity
prayer, and told them the vote was canceled.

The office of Speaker Boehner told the office of Majority Leader
Harry Reid's on Tuesday night that they would be willing to send them a
"message" so that the procedural process of getting a debt limit and
government funding bill could move faster.

A message is a legislative vehicle that if sent from Boehner to the
Senate would allow Reid to skip one cloture vote. This would ensure that
if one Senator wanted to gum up the works, he or she could only force
30 hours of consideration.

Yes, of all the people to ask that question.
Hard to believe that it took until now for her to ask whether the Party being controlled by a bunch of homophobic immigrant hating creationists who think Obama was born in Kenya have only NOW shut down their brains. But then again, she's Megan McArdle and thankfully you are not.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

I am the co-habitant of a four legged fuzz ball that has from time-to-time been featured on this here blog. She's a good ol' mutt who is now over 14 years old -- this weekend she tore her ACL -- ending her season on whatever NFL team a 25-pound long-haired Border/Gordon mix would play for.

She's getting better, but it must be tough to have to give up jumping after all these years.

Sen. Ted Cruz met with roughly 15 to 20 House Republicans for around
two hours late Monday night at the Capitol Hill watering hole Tortilla
Coast.

The group appeared to be talking strategy about how they should
respond to a tentative Senate deal to reopen the government and raise
the debt ceiling without addressing Obamacare in a substantive way,
according to sources who witnessed the gathering. The Texas Republican
senator and many of the House Republicans in attendance had insisted on
including amendments aimed at dismantling Obamacare in the continuing
resolution that was intended to avert the current shutdown.

Sources said the House Republicans meeting in the basement of
Tortilla Coast with Cruz were some of the most conservative in the
House: Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas, Steve King of Iowa, Jim Jordan of
Ohio, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Raúl R. Labrador of Idaho, Steve
Southerland II of Florida, Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Justin
Amash of Michigan.

The group is a collection of members who have often given leadership
headaches in recent years by opposing both compromise measures as well
as packages crafted by fellow Republicans. And, it seems, leadership
unwittingly became aware of the meetup.

You hear a perfect record cited over and over in the debt limit debate: The United States has never defaulted. Better put an asterisk by that.
America has briefly stiffed some of its creditors on at least two occasions.

One was in 1979 because of a technical glitch, quick rectified under "History's Greatest Monster", Jimmy Carter. The other...during the War of 1812, or as Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz know it, "the time Roosevelt let the Germans burn down a white house at Pearl Harbor"

Once, the young nation had a dramatic excuse: The Treasury was empty, the White House and Capitol were charred ruins, even the troops fighting the War of 1812 weren't getting paid...

Congress has probably never been less popular (which is a bit like saying "Syphilis sees popularity dip") but I'm going to peremptorily call bullshit on this one.

Only one-quarter of Americans think that their own member of Congress should be reelected, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. That's a sharp departure from similar polls conducted before the government shutdown.

In the new survey, 25 percent of respondents said they believe the
member of Congress from their district deserves to be reelected, while
47 percent said they did not. Another 27 percent said they weren't sure.

It would be nice to think that the crazy party would be replaced by the party of generic kleptocrats but considering past history and the fact that the GOP has twelve and a half-months to get outraged about an African-American guy I'm pretty confident crazy will survive...the rest of us, not so much.

According to the Washington Examiner,
Ted Cruz held a closed-door lunch meeting on Wednesday during which he
claimed that his plan to defund Obamacare through a government shutdown
had placed the GOP in a politically advantageous position.

The Republican Party has been "badly damaged" by the government shutdown, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday evening, which finds public opinion souring on the GOP and some of its core positions.

Americans blamed Republicans over President Barack Obama for the
shutdown by a margin of 22 percentage points, with 53 percent saying
the GOP deserved more blame, and 31 percent saying Obama did. Approval
ratings for the Republican Party and the tea party were at 24 percent
and 21 percent respectively -- both record lows as measured by NBC/WSJ.

Hard to believe big banksters feel immune from little things...like the law and ethics. Those are for other legal entities that are defined as people, namely the one's that are actually people.

In a March 2012 meeting, a group of examiners at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York agreed that Goldman Sachs had inadequate procedures to guard against conflicts of interest — guidelines aimed at stopping firms from putting their pursuit of profit ahead of their clients’ best interests.
The examiners voted to downgrade a confidential rating assigned by the New York Fed that could have spurred costly enforcement actions and other regulatory penalties. It is not known whether the vote materialized in a rating change. The former examiner who pushed for a downgrade, Carmen Segarra, now contends in a lawsuit filed Thursday that just weeks after the vote, her superiors asked her to change her findings on Goldman and fired her after she refused.

One cannot take a few million out of Lloyd Blankfeld's bonus package, it's so unfair, unfairness is for everybody else.

Is probably the last generation that has a chance to make any positive contribution to prevent catastrophic climate change.

And so far all we've produced is gay marriage and the Tea Party.

So that's a mixed bag (although let's face it the Baby Boomers own the Tea Party).

So we've blown it...fortunately we have a good shot at being dead before this happens.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Starting in about a decade, Kingston, Jamaica, will probably be off-the-charts hot — permanently. Other places will soon follow. Singapore in 2028. Mexico City in 2031. Cairo in 2036. Phoenix and Honolulu in 2043.
And eventually the whole world in 2047.
A new study on global warming pinpoints the probable dates for when cities and ecosystems around the world will regularly experience hotter environments the likes of which they have never seen before.
And for dozens of cities, mostly in the tropics, those dates are a generation or less away.
"This paper is both innovative and sobering," said Oregon State University professor Jane Lubchenco, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who was not involved in the study.

But what Wall Street fails to realize, according to Potomac Research Group's Greg Valliere, is the extent to which the Tea Party just doesn't care. Valliere wrote to clients this morning:

We talked to Tea Party stalwarts last night, and tried to make our best arguments. "Don't you realize the Republicans could lose the House in 2014?" We don't care, they said. "Don't you worry about a catastrophic reaction in the financial markets?" We don't care, they said. "Don't you worry that the Democrats will aggressively play the Social Security card with seniors?" We don't care, they said.

"This is the Alamo, it's Braveheart, battles to the death. These people are on a Mission from God," Valliere says.

It's going to be a long wait for that mortality table to catch up to me.
[Cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

After suffering a devastating miscarriage in December 2011, Michelle Duggar is trying to get pregnant again with her 20th child. The 19 Kids and Counting reality TV mom says she and husband Jim Bob Duggar are hoping to be "blessed" with another pregnancy.

For a pair who thinks they hear God telling them what to do, you'd think they might have thought the Almighty was giving one a hint...

Conservatives gathered
at the Plaza hotel in Manhattan Monday night to roast the former Vice
President at an event where many of the biggest laugh lines touched on
the most controversial policies of a key architect of his
administration’s War on Terror. At the gathering, hosted by Commentary,
figures including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former
Attorney General Michael Mukasey drew a mix of chuckles and winces with
jokes that left few lines uncrossed, according to three guests.

Senator
Joe Lieberman “said something to the effect that it’s nice that we’re
all here at the Plaza instead of in cages after some war crimes trial,”
recalled one person who was there.

No, it isn't.

“There were some waterboarding jokes that were really tasteless,” the
guest said. “I can see the case for enhanced interrogation techniques
after Sept. 11 but I can’t really endorse sitting there drinking wine
and fancy dinner at the Plaza laughing uproariously about it.”

Cheney
himself told one waterboarding joke, the attendees said, which he
attributed to Jay Leno. It centered on a one-shot antelope hunting
contest in Wyoming in which the loser had to dance with an Indian squaw.
Cheney’s shot got caught in the barrel, producing a dispute over
whether it counted as a hit or a miss — and Leno, according to Cheney,
joked that Cheney wanted to go catch the animal with his bare hands and
waterboard it.

Speaker John Boehner rallied his troops this morning at a closed-door conference meeting at the Capitol. Democrats are trying to “annihilate us,” he told his members. “We can get through this if we stick together.”

Yeah, amazing how that 12th dimensional chess works...secret is for Obama not to play it apparently.

The Ohio Republican added that a “grand bargain” is off the table. What he wants is something that “builds on the gains we’ve made over the past three years, puts points on the board, and doesn’t raise taxes.”

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Head Start programs have been shuttered, small businesses can’t get loans
and hundreds of thousands of federal government employees are
furloughed. But the exclusive gyms available only to members of Congress
have remained open throughout the shutdown.

According to the aide, the decision to keep the gym open — even while
other critical government services were shelved — came directly from
Speaker Boehner’s office. Meanwhile, the staff gym available to
Congressional staff has been closed.

If you want to hire a guy to defend your patently racist team nickname as being sacrosanct then you need to hire an asshole with no moral scruples...the kind of guy who will advocate for any third-rate dictator for a six-figure retainer.

Lanny Davis, once a Bill Clinton strategist, a pal of Joe Lieberman and
now attorney for the Washington, D.C., NFL football franchise, chastised
President Obama Monday for commenting unfavorably on the name of that
team.

Monday, October 07, 2013

The Post has a profile in motion of freshman House Republican Ted Yoho
(FL). The focus is how he's part of the faction who forced John Boehner
to trigger the government shutdown and now wants to move along to
default on the national debt. How bad will default be? "I think,
personally, it would bring stability to the world markets," Yoho told the Post.

Absorb
that for a moment. He's on the team that's driving this bus. What
would at best be a huge jolt to the global economy and more likely
trigger a global financial crisis and do irreparable harm to the
country, he thinks will actually improve things.

Somebody in his family, unsurprisingly, did not know how to spell "Yahoo".

The Ordinance of Nullification declared the Tariff of 1828 and 1832 null and void within the state borders of South Carolina. It began the Nullification Crisis. Passed by a state convention on November 24, 1832, it led, on December 10, to President Andrew Jackson's proclamation against South Carolina, the Nullification Proclamation of 1832, which sent a naval flotilla and a threat of sending government ground troops to enforce the tariffs. In the face of the military threat, and following a Congressional revision of the tariff, South Carolina repealed the ordinance.

We, the People of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the twenty-third day of May in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven hundred and eight eight, whereby the Constitution of the United State of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying amendment of the said Constitution, are here by repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of “The United States of America,” is hereby dissolved

Saturday, October 05, 2013

“So what are the tips you need to know, to do it correctly -- you grew up on tacos, correct?” Fox News commentator Brian Kilmeade asked Latina meteorologist Maria Molina during Friday’s broadcast of Fox and Friends.
“She Colombian,” Steve Doocy chimed in, also missing the mark.
“No, I did not grow up on tacos,” Molina says, laughing. “I’m Nicaraguan, and it’s not a native food.”

They are a barking-mad pack of ideologues, is what they are. I haven’t written much about the Obamacare thing because I don’t follow policy closely. As far as I know, Obamacare is a bad idea. But here’s the thing: it’s the law. It was passed, signed by the president, and upheld in the Supreme Court. There is no way the House Republicans, or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, is going to overturn it. The best they can do is to delay it. And then what? Guess what: the 2012 elections were their last, best chance to overturn Obamacare, and the country didn’t go for it.
There are other battles to fight. These guys are taking the government and the economy to the brink of crisis, and for what? For the sake of rebel yells and the Lost Cause?

Thursday, October 03, 2013

I have no idea why anyone would go to Hobby Lobby to get their cheap crap but here you go:

The Hobby Lobby Hanukkah controversy began when Berwitz learned that on a recent shopping trip his wife’s friends could not find anything related to Hanukkah at their local Hobby Lobby store in Marlboro, N.J., though it was stocked with Christmas items.
According to Berwitz, one of the women asked about bar mitzvah cards, and a Hobby Lobby salesperson replied: “We don’t cater to you people.”
That story prompted Berwitz, who own a market research company and writes the “Hopelessly Partisan” blog, to call the Marlboro store and ask why it seemed to be ignoring Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of lights, which begins on Nov. 27 this year. He wrote that he received the following response:
“Because Mr. Green is the owner of the company, he’s a Christian, and those are his values.”

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

As long as the government is shut down, the National Institutes of
Health will turn away roughly 200 patients each week from its clinical
research center, including children with cancer.

That's according to Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. He laid out the situation for the Wall Street Journal:

At the National Institutes of Health, nearly
three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis
Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the
NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away.
This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.

The ever relinquishing grip on reality of not only the far-right, but establishment conservative media continues to pick up speed. FoxNews reliably chump-enabling.

What the Obama administration is portraying as a "shutdown" of the federal government -- complete with signs posted at the entrances to government buildings, parks and monuments -- is turning out to be more of a "slimdown," as all but non-essential workers reported to their jobs Tuesday.

I suppose the next thing to state is that hundreds of thousands of governmental employees rudely took an indefinite vacation -- just not to a national park.
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

(Reuters) - The Securities and Exchange Commission will remain open for business even if Congress fails to strike a budget deal to keep the government operating, SEC spokesman John Nester said Monday.

So don't you worry Banksters and Hedge-Fund Managers the SEC will be their "open FOR business" as usual, so you'll be able to get away with all manner of crimes as usual.
The rest of you 99 percenters can suck it.